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street to look for a
     doctor. Eventually he was able to locate members of the Red Cross, who put the woman on a stretcher and made their way through
     the streets to a hospital, their white flag ignored as artillery shells exploded around them. When they reached the hospital,
     they learned no doctor was available. “We waited for probably half an hour when several men finally volunteered to search
     for a doctor. They brought in a Mexican doctor. I asked him immediately to amputate the leg if that would help save my mother’s
     life. He said he would amputate the leg if it were possible, but that lack of proper assistance would make the task difficult
     and dangerous as well. My mother called to me several times in moments of consciousness, each time asking me to kill her.”
     Mrs. Griffith survived the amputation only to go into heart failure soon afterward and die about four o’clock that afternoon.
     When Percy returned to the boardinghouse, he was told the other woman had died, too.
    Ambassador Wilson, in a state of high excitement over the bloodshed, asked President William Howard Taft for the authority
     to help negotiate a peace between the warring factions. Taft refused, unwilling to intervene in Mexico’s internal affairs.
     Still not content to sit on the sidelines, the American ambassador then urged the ministers of Great Britain, Germany, and
     Spain to request Madero’s resignation. “Mr. Wilson, nervous, pale, and with exotic gestures, told us for the hundredth time
     that Madero was crazy, a fool, a lunatic who could and should be declared incompetent to sit in office. This situation in
     the capital is intolerable. ‘I will put in order [
sic
],’ he told us, hitting the table,” the Spanish minister said.
    Huerta was eager to see Madero’s government fall and his purported defense of the capital was merely an effort to maintain
     the status quo while pressure built for Madero’s resignation. Madero’s brother, Gustavo, increasingly convinced of Huerta’s
     malevolent intentions, arrested him at gunpoint on February 17. Madero had Huerta brought before him and questioned him closely.
     After Huerta convinced him of his loyalty, Madero gave the general back his gun and chastised his brother for his impulsive
     behavior.
    But Gustavo, who would be savagely murdered, was correct in his suspicions; a mere twenty-four hours later, Madero and his
     vice president were arrested. The little president took the detention in stride but Pino Suárez was bewildered and hurt. Once
     in custody, they agreed to resign under protest—
“Protestamos lo necesario”
—after their military captors promised that they and their families would be allowed to leave the country. The promise of
     safe passage was also extended to Felipe Ángeles, an army general who had refused to support the coup and was arrested at
     the same time as Madero and his vice president. The resignations led to a swift series of events that culminated with Huerta
     being sworn in as the provisional president. Ambassador Wilson, by all accounts a coconspirator in the coup, sent a telegram
     to Washington, exulting, “A wicked despotism has fallen.”
    On the evening of February 22, 1913, while Huerta was drinking with his cronies, the two deposed leaders were taken under
     guard from the National Palace and driven in separate cars to the penitentiary. The vehicles halted and a harsh voice cursed
     Madero and ordered him from the car. A bullet was fired into the back of his neck and he fell dead to the sidewalk. His vice
     president, who had an extra moment or two to consider his fate, was dispatched with the same efficiency. The bodies were wrapped
     in rough gray serapes and taken inside and the two cars were riddled with bullets. Huerta then proclaimed to the world that
     the two men were killed while allegedly trying to escape, a type of political assassination that was prevalent in the Díaz
     era and known as the
ley fuga,
or